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Dordt students win top videography award

After four jam-packed days of filming in Mozambique using a GoPro camera, an iPhone, and one of Dordt’s professional HD Panasonic cameras, Dordt College seniors Justin Gloudemans of Big Lake, Minnesota, and Jayson Korthuis of Lynden, Washington, shot nearly all the footage needed to create a documentary that has been awarded the Award of Excellence, the top honor bestowed by the Videography Awards.

The 12-minute documentary was sponsored by Communities of Fusion, a group of organizations that provide opportunities for education and agriculture to people in Mozambique. The video can be viewed at http://vimeo.com/69552229.

Sioux Center’s Center Fresh Eggs is one of the organizations that participates in Communities of Fusion. When owners Bruce and Kim Dooyema contacted Dordt College about filming the project, Professor of Digital Media Production Mark Volkers suggested that Gloudemans and Korthuis do it. The two digital media students were already in Africa on a study abroad semester-long program at Daystar University in Nairobi, Kenya. This was the first crop of Dordt students to take advantage of the semester exchange program.

Preparation, travel, and filming were a “whirlwind,” said Korthuis. “We had to be ready within about a week to go to Nampula, Mozambique. We scrambled to find airline tickets, and we were in a foreign country with limited Internet access.” Once they arrived in Mozambique, they went straight to work, shooting long hours for four days.

“That was guerilla filmmaking at its best,” said Volkers. “They had little time to prepare, and they didn’t have an abundance of filming equipment available. They made the most with what little they had available to them.”

The film highlighted the work of Communities of Fusion and explained the need for education in Mozambique about diet and nutrition, noting that many family diets consist largely of starches with little protein. “The average egg consumption is about eight eggs per person per year, compared to the United States where the average consumption is 250 eggs per person per year,” said Bruce Dooyema.

The Videographer Awards is one of the oldest and most respected awards programs in the industry. There were more than 1,500 entries from throughout the United States and 11 other countries in the 2013 competition.

The Award of Excellence is one of a large and growing number of awards that Dordt College and its production company Prairie Grass Productions has garnered since the digital media program began in 2005. To learn more about the program, visit www.dordt.edu/media.